If you use Norton as your device security software, you are familiar with the Norton Safe Site rating. When your search engine returns results, it has the Norton name and a little symbol that is either green or gray. Here is the picture that Bing returns when you type in the two words search “Sea Clutch”.
There is a lot going on in this picture! The first thing to notice is that there are over 10,000,000 “hits” with the two word search “Sea Clutch, but note that my website is number one on the list! That is huge as the site comes in higher than Etsy or eBay! That is tangible example of why you must work the SEO list and keep at it. The second thing to notice is that Norton thinks the website is safe. I’ll explain how I did that next.
Here is a picture of a one word search “SeaClutch” on Bing.
There are some differences. Notice that there were 5600 search results for this more specific "SeaClutch" search as compare to 10,000,000 of the more generic “sea clutch” search above. Also notice that since the search is the same as the website name, you get a summary paragraph of what is on the website at the top of the page. All of these things display as part of your SEO efforts, so you need to make sure that you work with the setting on your website until you are happy with what displays on the various search engines. I had to scroll down a few sites to get to one that was unrated by Norton. The Norton pop up is for the "Seclutch" site and notice how Norton won’t guarantee the safety of that site. That could keep some customers away ad the the internet can be a very dangerous place! If the site has been documented as unsafe (spam, viruses, etc), there will be a different Norton indicator on the site, and the same SEO tools that help you rise in the rankings drive you down in the rankings if you are unsafe.
So how do you get a Norton safe ranking?
The first step is to click on the Norton box that is rating your site which will bring you to the Norton website. It is relatively straight forward with the first step being to request the review your site. You have to prove you are the owner by showing that you have access to the underlying code, and you accomplish this by taking a snippet of their code and inserting it into the heading on your site. Only someone with administrator privileges can do that! After you insert the code you click on a link on their site and they immediately confirm that you inserted the link and are the owner. The next step is to ask them to rate your site.
Then you wait. And wait. And wait. I have two websites, and both required me to resubmit my request for a rating multiple times. Every time you submit a request they send you a confirmation email, and they clearly say that there is no expectation that anyone will read your reply to their email.
I think that there are so many websites popping appearing online that they really don’t have the capacity to stay on top of the ratings, but they are doing the best they can and they eventually get to everyone.
After several weeks I received my Norton safe rating and the coveted green icon next to my web site.
The provisional patent was filed, the product named, the logo designed, trademarks had been filed and the website was live. By this time, it had been several months since our “online product showcase” was live and we didn’t have any marketing deals. I had several discussions with our account rep, and she indicated (unofficially of course!) that most of the products didn’t receive an offer with just a provisional patent filed because that only protected the idea for one year. She suggested I find a patent attorney and file for the 20-year utility patent. I decided to do that and decided to go with the law firm that did our provisional patent.
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